A quick search of the internet for signs of the coming zombie apocalypse yielded results that I feel are fairly inaccurate.  Bizarre parasites, mutations, and idiotic political leaders don’t seem to herald the end of times to me.  Maybe it’s just the time I grew up in?  But today something hit much closer to home.

Do you guys remember Fish?  He came to live with us in March.  Well my friends, today Fish died.  Again. I mean,  I think.  I’m almost certain of it.

Shortly after Fish came to live with us I was in my kid’s room and I looked at the tank… there was fish motionless, limp, and floating.  My mother was visiting at the time and I called her in to counsel me, after all, Fish had only been with us a few days.  I wasn’t entirely sure how to break the news to my girl.  But as first my mother and then daughter came in to the room to see what all the commotion was Fish began swimming around jauntily.

What, you’ve never seen a swish swim jauntily?  They can.  Fish does.  Stop mocking and keep your comments and questions until the end please…

That little fucker had some sort of fit, went into paralytic shock, had a seizure and was rendered unconscious, or he died.  Or he has one hell of a sick sense of humor.  He scared me nearly to death.

Well today while my kid was out I went in to her room to put away an errant lip gloss.  As I walked past his tank I chimed Hey Fish. He didn’t reply, but he’s a fish so that’s cool.  What wasn’t cool was when I stooped down to take a look at how my fishy friend was doing I noticed that he was entirely motionless floating belly up in the corner of his tank.

Fuck.

That’s what I said, because what else do you say in a situation such as this?  Remembering his fake-out last time I tried to push the panicked feeling back and I watched.  I sat down on the bed and stared at his tank and waited while tears welled up.  I fished my phone out of my back pocket and dialed speaking into the headphones I was already wearing.

I babbled and ranted and cried, not knowing exactly how to deal with this damn dead fish.  Should I flush it before she gets home? Wait for her to attend the flushing?  I wasn’t ready.  Not that I ever would be, but I was particularly unready for a dead fish at that moment.  On this day.  It’s going to be a crazy enough week without a fish corpse to deal with.

I paced from room to room and babbled and listened carefully to comforting words.  And I felt completely ridiculous.  All this over a fish.  I mean, not just any fish, Fish.  But still, I’m a grown ass woman.  I can handle stuff.

And then I walked back into her room to take another look at the corpse and that beautiful red bastard was not floating where I expected him to float.  He was on the other side of the tank.

Right side up.

Swimming.

Fish is a fucking zombie.  I think the rest of them are coming.